Basically, there are two different data retrieval methods for a user to retrieve data from a data base of a data server. In one method, a user directly accesses the data server to retrieve data from a client terminal. In the other method, a web server is provided between the client server and the data server, and a user accesses the data server from the client terminal via the web server.
In the former case, all the client terminals using the data retrieval operation are necessarily provided with a special program for directly accessing the data server. Such special programs usually have a relatively large file size from tens to hundreds of megabytes, which takes a relatively long time to install on a client terminal. Additionally, such special programs may sometimes be inoperable due to incompatibility of an operating system of the client terminal or merely a difference in version of the operating system. Thus, the total system costs are relatively high. On the other hand, this system has the advantage that such special programs can normally operate in collaboration with other application programs.
In the latter case, a user usually uses a web browser to retrieve data from the data server. A special program for connecting to the data server is required to be installed on the web server. The client terminals do not need to have special programs and thus the cost of the total system is reduced. The client terminal, in this case, cannot use a web browser in collaboration with other application programs since the web browser operates on the web server. Therefore, the client terminal cannot process the data, received through the data retrieval operation, seamlessly with other application programs.
Additionally, the web server, providing the services of the web browser, applies HTML and, accordingly, uses a relatively large number of table tags. This causes a receiver (e.g., the client terminal) difficulty in analyzing the data received from the web browser. Further, since a relatively large number of HTML tags are used in the data received from the web browser, there is an increase in communication costs between the web server and the client terminal with an increase of the number of columns and records. FIG. 1 shows an exemplary prior art screen source code set 70 for a response on the web browser to be transmitted to the client terminal by the web server when the web server is successful in the data retrieval operation. In order to display a response on the web browser, this code set 70 includes a number of HTML tags (e.g., tags of ″′<TR>″) in an entity body, which is the portion of the source code between “<BODY>”″ and ″</BODY>,″ as shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 2 is a prior art exemplary screen displayed using the screen source code set 70 of FIG. 1.